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<title>The Problem with Waiting by Deonara2012</title>
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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29677518">The Problem with Waiting</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deonara2012/pseuds/Deonara2012'>Deonara2012</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>ATEEZ (Band)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Dystopia, Drugs, Gen, Partial Mind Control</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-02-24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-02-24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-16 00:40:50</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>895</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29677518</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deonara2012/pseuds/Deonara2012</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Mingi has gone in undercover, and it's HARD, having to wait to act.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Whole New World</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>The Problem with Waiting</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>the idea from this story came from the MV for BTS's <a href="https://youtu.be/mmgxPLLLyVo">N.O</a></p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Unlike the others in his section, Mingi knew exactly how he had come to be here, what the government wan trying to do, and how to get out. He knew more about this bloody program than anyone inside it had any right to. He'd come into it with eyes open, willing to subject himself to the drugs, to the indoctrination, to whatever else they did to him, because he wanted to get people out. He desperately wanted to get his best friend out, and that was how he'd ended up in the same place as Yunho, dying a little inside at the blank look on his friend's face, and soon enough on everyone's face in that hell hole.</p><p>He couldn't do anything yet, though. He knew he had to wait for the signal, wait to get them out, wait and wait and wait. It wasn't hard to pretend to be drugged, to pretend to have no interest in the instruction given by some random... okay, so the instructor was supposed to be the expert on indoctrination, which was why he was talking to them, as drugged as they were. Mingi had the worst time following him, possibly because he wasn't drugged. </p><p>He'd practiced and worked and fought to make sure he could do what he needed to, could react as dull as they did, kept his expression blank, his face slack, everything so completely bland. He forced himself to eat the things they fed him, forced his stomach and his tongue to accept it without rebelling (although at least once, Sunghwa didn't manage to keep something down, and they had to change the recipe before someone else made a mess they physically weren't able to clean up). He wondered why they pounded this into their heads when they were so drugged they couldn't focus enough to get anything in, and he wondered it every time he sat in that room, his hands on the desk, acting like the rest of them.</p><p>It became rote, routine, and he knew, he <i>knew</i> that was a problem, was something he shouldn't have fallen into, because he found the instructor in his face, glaring down at him. "What did you say?"</p><p>Mingi looked up at him, slowly, carefully. "I said?" he repeated dully.</p><p>"You said something," the instructor snarled. "What was it?"</p><p>He blinked, slowly again, and his face twisted into a faint look of confusion. "You don't allow speech if we aren't spoken to," he said slowly.</p><p>"You spoke."</p><p>"I'm sorry," Mingi said, blinking again. "I didn't...."</p><p>Two of the guards stepped up to flank the instructor at his gesture. "You said you didn't understand why you were here, why we tried to get this into your heads," he said flatly. "We expect obedience, Mr. Song. You are not giving it." He stepped back. "Take him to his room."</p><p>The two guards, helmeted and shielded even in this room with eight over-drugged men, took his arms and hoisted him to his feet. Mingi suppressed the instinct to fight them and let them take him. "Wait," he mumbled, putting up at least a token protest. "I don't understand."</p><p>The instructor smiled with a cruelty Mingi hadn't seen in his face before. "Understanding isn't the issue," he said. "Obedience is. You must learn to obey."</p><p>Mingi went with the guards as they walked him out of the classroom and didn't dare look back, didn't dare look to find out if anyone watched him go. The door hadn't even closed when the man had started back up on his rhetoric.</p><p>He stumbled as they walked him down the wide hall, wide enough for all three to walk abreast - so they'd planned for this? - and to his own little cell. It wasn't big enough to be called a room. It held a bed, a chair, a closet he couldn't fit into without having an attack of claustrophobia. Inside the closet hung two uniforms and a pair of pjs. He sat in the chair and put his head in his hands, not daring to do more that that. He knew they were being watched in their rooms, knew they were being listened to. Not that there was anything to hear - but that was the point. If they started talking there....</p><p>The door opened and he looked up, still moving slowly, to see the doctor from the infirmary standing in the doorway. He was a man Mingi never wanted to see, ever, and he couldn't help shrinking back a little. The doctor smiled, and he knew the man had that much cruelty. The doctor took Mingi's wrist and checked his pulse, watching him the whole time. "You spoke up in class," he said in a deceptively calm voice. </p><p>"I didn't mean to," Mingi said, his words slurred.</p><p>The doctor lifted an eyebrow. "I see," he said, and let Mingi's wrist go. Mingi still felt trapped because this man stood between him and the door. The doctor wrote something on the file he'd brought with him, tucked under his arm. "What do we do about this?"</p><p>Mingi dropped his eyes, staring at the floor. It was all he could do, because if he looked at the doctor, he'd probably give everything away, and his complacency had already compromised him far too much. He could only hope that he hadn't done irreversible damage to his mission.</p>
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